Thousands of accounts dormant for five decades have been reportedly discovered in Switzerland. A new Swiss law requires banks to publish information this year on accounts that were opened 60 years ago and have been unclaimed since then.

A spokeswoman for the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) says the
accounts in question - several thousand of them - were from both
Swiss and foreign customers. It is said that they were
"neither in time nor geographically associated with
Nazism," AFP said.

The original report was run by Die Welt am Sonntag German
newspaper on Sunday.

Unclaimed accounts became a highly sensitive topic in Switzerland
after the World Jewish Congress launched a campaign in 1995 for
Swiss banks to return the assets of Holocaust victims.